ing very
straight (that is with the minimum of intelligence) to see it shine out
in as many aspects as the hues of the prism; or place itself, in other
words, in relations that positively stop nowhere. I've often thought I
should like some day to write a novel; but what would become of me in
that case--delivered over, I mean, before my subject, to my extravagant
sense that everything is a part of something else? When you paint a
picture with a brush and pigments, that is on a single plane, it can
stop at your gilt frame; but when you paint one with a pen and words,
that is in ALL the dimensions, how are you to stop? Of course, as
Lorraine says, "Stopping, that's art; and what are we artists like,
my dear, but those drivers of trolley-cars, in New York, who, by some
divine instinct, recognize in the forest of pillars and posts the
white-striped columns at which they may pull up? Yes, we're drivers of
trolley-cars charged with electric force and prepared to go any distance
from which the consideration of a probable smash ahead doesn't deter
us."

That consideration deters me doubtless even a little here--in spite of
my seeing the track, to the next bend, so temptingly clear. I should
like to note for instance, for my own satisfaction (though no fellow,
thank God, was ever less a prey to the ignoble fear of inconsistency)
that poor Mother's impugnment of my acquisition of Lorraine didn't in
the least disconcert me. I did pick Lorraine--then a little bleating
stray lamb collared with a blue ribbon and a tinkling silver bell--out
of our New York bear-garden; but it interests me awfully to recognize
that, whereas the kind of association is one I hate for my small
Philistine sister, who probably has the makings of a nice, dull,
dressed, amiable, insignificant woman, I recognize it perfectly as
Lorraine's native element and my own; or at least don't at all mind her
having been dipped in it. It has tempered and plated us for the rest of
life, and to an effect different enough from the awful metallic wash of
our Company's admired ice-pitchers. We artists are at the best children
of despair--a certain divine despair, as Lorraine naturally says; and
what jollier place for laying it in abundantly than the Art League? As
for Peg, however, I won't hear of her having anything to do with this;
she shall despair of nothing worse than the "hang" of her skirt or the
moderation other hat--and not often, if I can help her, even of those.